Abstract
This essay addresses the problem of finding a theologically and psychologically adequate “listening perspective” from which to interpret religious imagery in counseling contexts. The essay proposes that the revision of psychoanalytic theory broadly termed “object relations theory”, with its attention to the distinctive inner representational world of each individual, may provide just such a resource. This perspective adopts Freud's basic insights on the genetic origins of the individual's God representation in the family romance, but avoids the reductionism of the Freudian position by positing a different understanding of fundamental human motivation, namely that it involves the creation and maintenance of a sense of being a self-in-relationship. The essay considers how the psychic representation of God may therefore be understood to function in this life of the self and illustrates this by reference to a clinical case from the work of D.W. Winnicott and a case from pastoral work.
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References
Washington: University Press of America, 1983)
For a thorough theoretical analysis of the implications of contemporary psychoanalysis for the traditional Freudian assessment of human religiousness, see William Meissner, S.J., M.D.Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). An introduction to the research of Dr. Ana-Maria Rizzuto is found in Edward Stein,: The Psychological Roots of Self and Faith”,Pastoral Psychology, vol. 33, no. 3, Spring 1985, 188–199.
An excellent general introduction to the psychoanalytic revision discussed here is Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell,Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
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W.R.D. Fairbairn,Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1952).
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McDargh, J. God, mother and me: An object relational perspective on religious material. Pastoral Psychol 34, 251–263 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01794550
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01794550